Newburyport UU meetinghouse undergoing $400K renovation

Thursday

Aug 28, 2014 at 3:29 PMAug 28, 2014 at 3:29 PM

By John HarwoodSpecial to the Current

White, black, green. Those were the choices.No blue, Bill asked, like the color of the sky?It fell to William "Bill" Heenehan of the First Religious Society to choose the color of the debris cloth that now shrouds scaffolding on the Newburyport church’s steeple.The debris cloth stops any components of the building falling; pieces of the steeple had been dropping to the sidewalk, according to Heenehan. The workers use railings and cross rails, or if they are on the scaffolding’s outside, which would be most unusual, he said, they would be strapped to a harness to keep themselves safe.However, neither he, nor this Unitarian Universalist congregation, nor the Newburyport Historical Commission thought for a moment that they had any choice about preserving the steeple that is the city’s most often photographed historic feature.So the city came up with $200,000 of Community Preservation Act money, other private sources have contributed and Heenehan, business administrator and project manager for the church, may reach out to the community to raise the $95,000 still needed to pay for this $415,000 preservation project.Beyond being green on the outside — if only for a couple of months — the UU church, as it is known, also took steps earlier this year to be green on the inside.In May, after a two-year process, the congregation of nearly 400 members voted overwhelmingly to divest its $1.7 million endowment from fossil fuel companies in an effort to stem the rising tide of climate change. In this area, sea level rise is eating away at cities and towns, and threatening their future with the increased danger of a super storm, like Sandy.Just a month later, the Pleasant Street church sent representatives to its national annual meeting of congregations in Providence, where delegates resoundingly voted in favor of divesting the UU association’s $170 million portfolio of fossil fuel corporations.The Rev. Harold Babcock, the UU church’s pastor for the past 19 years, puts it this way."We have many new members who are not satisfied with a spiritual experience only, but who want to make a real difference in the world, perhaps in a more hands-on way than in the past."We are not just our building," Rev. Babcock emphasized, "but the fact that we inhabit this beautiful, historic structure does place a responsibility on us that requires resources that might otherwise be spent in other ways."So how is this UU congregation acting responsibly by undertaking the preservation of its 1801 meetinghouse, one of those "large, old wooden churches (that) are very expensive to maintain," according to Linda Smiley, chair of the Newburyport Historical Commission?In the first place, the UUs are confirming their commitment to the "rock lot" where they moved from Market Square more than two centuries ago.In 2003, rather than move again, as others have done, they transformed the meetinghouse’s dirt-floor basement — with the rock protruding in one corner — into offices for its growing staff, meeting rooms for members and others in the community, and classrooms for religious education, what they call Young Church, a $1.4 million project for which the church still has a small mortgage.Should you enter this inviting space today, you would find workers preserving original windows with linseed oil, special linseed-oil-based putty and even authentic old replacement glass where needed.In 2012, members organized a thorough reconstruction of the pipe organ — not an original feature of the meetinghouse — to the tune of $277,000, so it can continue to be heard at Sunday morning services, concerts and the Christmas season candlelight service, which has been filling the meetinghouse since 1925.When the times called for something more than a meetinghouse, in 1878, a Parish Hall was squeezed in on the lot. The one-story building was subsequently raised to create the two-story structure seen today.Outside the meetinghouse, Painters Pride are removing lead-based paint mechanically to avoid the danger of fire and to capture the lead, which has revealed how the clapboards were linked, end to end, to keep moisture out, typical for 1801, but not for today.Certainly, the focal point is the steeple and its spire — the pointy thing on top — on which the weather cock sits 150 feet above the brick sidewalk below. Rest assured, the weather vane has been moved to a safe place.Before the debris cloth was installed, the most observant may have noticed objects that looked like huge speakers attached to the outer edge of the scaffolding. They are the cell phone antennas that have occupied the steeple in recent years, an example — along with a sprinkler system indoors — of how the UU church has acted to preserve its classic New England meetinghouse, keeping it safe and useful for its members and the community, and raising the money to make that happen.John Harwood is a retired newspaper journalist and a 30-year member of the First Religious Society.